Posts Tagged ‘NAPA’

I finally made a little progress after two consecutive snow storms that conveniently happened to both fall on weekends. The distributor and Taylor custom fit spark plug wires were installed. Unfortunately I’ll have to remove the intake to replace the valley pan. I’ve decided to use an aluminum valley pan from Butler Performance. I mistakingly left the PCV grommet in place before I dropped off the valley pan to the machine shop. Not long after installing the intake, it quickly became evident that the grommet could not be removed without breaking apart and falling into the motor. The ’73 fuel pump was swapped out at Napa for an ’81 style. They are practically identical except for the direction of the fuel inlet tubes. The ’81 style faces the opposite direction from the ’73. To finish out the day, a rebuilt quadrajet carburetor from Sean Murphy Induction was mounted to the Tomahawk intake.

The Trans Am restoration continues. A Flow-Kooler water pump was purchased from Summit. The water pump and fuel pump were cleared with Rust-o-leum’s Engine Enamel. The clear should prevent aluminum oxidation in the future. The fuel pump was purchased from Napa Auto Parts. The fuel pump was for a ’73 Pontiac. It turns out that the fuel lines are on opposite sides of the car for ’73 and ’81 because the fuel inlets point in the wrong direction. On the ’73 the inlets point across the motor. This is a problem since my fuel lines are on the driver’s side. I could get by with looping a fuel hose around to the inlet but getting the later pump should make the setup cleaner and more safe. Lastly, the oil filter housing was painted metallic blue to match the block. The engine should be ready to start in a few weeks.

After the top ball joints were bolted in and there was so much trouble pressing the lower ball joint in I got a tip that the ball joints that I got from NAPA were actually their budget models which sometimes don’t take grease that well. The top two ball joints were removed along with the lower ball joint that wasn’t fully pressed anyway. The cheap ones were exchanged for the better kind. Unfortunately they were almost double the price but the quality difference could be spotted from a mile away. So be sure to insist on NAPA’s premium ball joints when replacing if you don’t mind paying a little more. After the ball joints were finally pressed in, the control arms were scuffed with a scotch-brite then the bushings taped and a second coat of a paint applied.

Since I’m upgrading to a Tremec 5 speed, the Classic Chevy 5-speed kit comes with all of the necessary parts to do the changeover. The first of these parts to go one was the clutch bar frame bracket. Even the cars equipped with automatic transmissions like mine came with the holes pre-drilled for this bracket. To fasten the bracket to the frame I tapped these holes with a 5/16-24 tap. The holes were the correct size for this tap and did not have to be drilled first. Three 5/16-24 x 1″ stainless steel screws with a small bead of Loc-Tite fastened the two together. The last project of the day was to begin installing the stainless brake/fuel lines to the subframe that were purchased from National Parts Depot.